Tag Archives: Calgon

#ROW80 update (composed during shaved ice sugar high)

July 11, 2012 5:32 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Update!

I’ve written every day since Sunday, except for today as I have barely been home. There’s still time! I’ve worked on a different project each day and have put in between 200-500 words. Not a lot, but it’s better than the zero I get when I stress about not having enough time to hit 1K a day.

I was good about not checking my stats until yesterday, when I was ordering a cookbook and saw in my history on Amazon that the Day of Sacrifice Omnibus had received its first review.

Which was 1 star…because the reader ”was disturbed” that it was targeted at young adults.

Ahem.

The second line of the book description is as follows: The Day of Sacrifice Omnibus is intended for adult readers due to language and sexual situations.

The Day of Sacrifice stories are by S.W. Benefiel. See over there on the right sidebar of this blog? Under the Books for Adults – that’s where all the Day of Sacrifice titles appear.

I’m not sure what else I can do to let people know that, yes I write YA, but I also write NA, stuff for adults and stuff for ADULTS.

Anyway, that set me off on a stats binge. I not only checked my sales on every platform, but I checked the reviews on all of my books. 

I’ll do better. Now that I’ve publicly vented (note that I did not engage the reviewer even though I really, really wanted to) I can let it go.

So, last round I started this tumblr called Be Awesome, Beautiful Dreamer and I was going to add essays to it for a new Toilet Business-esque book of essays. But, then I never had any time to actually write all the new essays because I was worrying about getting DoS done and I have all of these starts that I haven’t finished yet. Forcing essays doesn’t work the same way you can force yourself to sit down and write a scene. It takes me longer to think out my opinion and what I remember about certain events and what to cut…

I digress.

Instead, I changed the name of the blog to FAT WRITER. I’m putting my whole family on the Paleo Diet starting next Monday and I thought it would be useful/funny/entertaining/informational to blog about it. There are two posts up now and I’m about to add another after I make dinner. Check it out. There’s a huge picture of me riding a giant brass tortoise at the Oregon Coast Aquarium on it.

I know, how can you resist?

Happy writing, friends! I’m off to make brats.

 

Posted in: E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Midsummer Retelling Stand Alone #ROW80 Dream

July 8, 2012 2:16 pm ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

Last night I had a dream that I was at an indie author convention and all of my writer friends were there. (I would die if this were ever really a thing. I have so many writer friends that I would love to meet in person!) After some hilarious antics involving a bee in my iced coffee cup and not being able to find the correct elevator that led me to my personal slot machine room, we all settled into a ballroom for the awards ceremony.

Lots of friends won awards and I was a little bummed. I knew I hadn’t won anything because I hadn’t put out a new novel since 2011 and no one was reading my short stories.

Then Vicki Keire suggested that I write a stand alone retelling of a Shakespearean play.

That’s when I woke up.

And realized that I have notes for a stand alone novel that’s a modern retelling of a classic.

Was the dream a sign? Is THIS what I should be working on?

Or, am I just freaking out?

I’m just freaking out, even in my sleep, apparently. I’ve got an overwhelming number of projects that I need to finish. Not that any of them have a deadline – apart from the one that I’ve made for myself that consists of GET MORE WORK OUT FASTER.

I’ve tried prioritizing works by projected release dates. I’ve tried daily and weekly word count, timing myself, writing for two hours a day, one hour a day, four thirty-minute intervals.

Blah, none of it works for me.

I need for writing to be fun again. That’s what works.

Therefore, my goals for this ROWnd are:

1. Write something every day. On any of the WIP’s, however much I get done, I get done. Eventually, one of them will be finished.

2. Stop reading reviews (I’m really close to doing this already.)

3. Check sales numbers once a week on Sunday morning. (The withdrawal is going to be a bitch. Ha!)

4. Always check-in on Sunday and try to check in on Wednesday.

That’s it!

Now I’m off to see what I can do with my new time travel short story, since I worked on Found several times this past week.

Happy writing!

 

Posted in: Blogs, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#ROW80 update from the trenches (a.k.a. my office before a garage sale)

June 13, 2012 9:18 am ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

We’re having a garage sale, therefore my office/seasonal clothes storage room/playroom annex/place where my husband keeps old desks that I hate and family china/ room where everyone dumps everything they can’t find a place for in the rest of the house, looks like several other peoples’ garage sales barfed all over it.

The kids climbed on one of my bookshelves and broke the bottom shelf, causing books to spill all over the floor. I stacked up the books and left the shelf. The kids stood on top of the books to get to the art supplies I keep on another shelf and ripped some of the covers off of the books. RIGHT NOW as I’m writing this, my daughter has just upset a box containing old baby toys and a license plate I stole off of a car when I lived in England the summer of 1990.

When I say this place is a disastrous mess, I’m not bullshitting you.

And I write books in the middle of this hoarders refuge, which can’t be good for my productivity because I spend a lot of time wishing I could just back a Dumpster up to this room, toss the lot and start from scratch.

So, I’m cleaning. I going to clean until it’s organized and the playroom is organized and the garage is organized. I’ll be working my ass off until the linen closet isn’t full of old printers and fax machines and scanners, but the bed linens that are stacked up in a laundry basket in the laundry room.

I’ve worked a little bit more on Found and it’s easy. I love writing it. I just can’t do it in the middle of all this mess anymore!!

Writing resumes on Monday.

…if you’re anywhere near Beaverton, OR in two weeks time, I’ll be selling my possessions out on the lawn.  Awesome deals on broken bookshelves and vintage foreign license plates.

Posted in: indie authors, indie readers, ROW80, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Some thangs and #ROW80

June 6, 2012 10:54 am ⋅ 5 Comments ⋅

I have a list of things I keep meaning to tell you all!

If you have a blog: Sign up for the Indelibles INDIEpendence Day celebration!

If you like to read interesting posts and win stuff: Visit the Mid Summer Dream Fair! My post is called The Stage and it’s coming up at the end of the month.

If you want to win a paperback copy of the Day of Sacrifice Omnibus: Sign up on Goodreads or…sign up on that big sign up widget thingy over in the sidebar there.

If you want to get two monthly newsletters about new releases from the Indelibles and the Pacific Northwest YA Authors: Click the link for the Indelibles and for the PacNWYAAuthors to sign up.

Row80 update: I’m making decent progress on the pen name stories and I purchased an e-book cover, so that’s a done deal. I thought of yet another funny story for the BABD blog…and someday I might actually write it and the other 17 stories I have to put on there. I haven’t worked anymore on Found. 

With the kids out of school and my husband only working away from home three days a week, I just can’t get anyone to leave me alone. If I didn’t have to pay for a new roof in July, I’d seriously consider renting office space and putting the kids in day care for a few hours every day!

Whenever people interview me they always ask how I manage to write books and stay at home with the kids. It’s a friggin’ MIRACLE that’s how. I have no idea. It just gets done and never in as timely a manner as I want. ;)

Posted in: E-books, Fiction, Giveaway, Guest Post, Indelibles, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#ROW80 update

April 25, 2012 9:45 pm ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

I’m getting this in at the very last moment!

Plugging along word count-wise on Unfavorable. This puppy needs to be done this weekend so that Sarah can proofread it next week and then I can send it to a couple of betas.

I wrote 1500 words yesterday and then spent the day today rearranging the scenes and writing a new one. My chronology was all off and I had characters explaining why things hadn’t happened yet instead of just having them happen. Also, in some scenes, they have two days until an epic battle and in others, it’s one! Super annoying. So, I stopped what I was doing and made a timeline.

I’ve been writing these stories since October 2010 and when I started them, I didn’t know how many there were going to be, who all the characters were or what was going to happen from one story to the next. (I had a similar experience with the Zellie books.)

Let me tell you, I’m never doing it this way again. It is way too difficult to keep track of everything.  The Society School books are getting a fat stack of Post-its and some poster boarding, that’s for damn sure! The timeline is going to help me a lot with Unfavorable, but I’m not sure why I haven’t made it before!  While I was perusing the stories 1-5, I also made notes of other things I’d flubbed up.  More rewrites!!

Then I will have only three more scenes to write. Or two. Ugh, I can’t decide!

Obviously, none of this is really up to me. :)

After I made the timeline, I combed through stock photography for three hours looking for the perfect woman/man/couple to put on the Day of Sacrifice Omnibus cover. I finally found them! They are a little more naked than I’d envisioned, but they are the right combo of hair and eye color and hotness level to be Flora and Julian.

The awesome Keary Taylor is making it for me.

That’s it! I’ve been on the computer for 14 hours. I think I can stop now.

Posted in: E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

#ROW80 update and My Pretties

April 11, 2012 4:13 pm ⋅ 7 Comments ⋅

ROW 80 update: Writing has been a little scattered this week. I had a hard time getting into Unfavorable on Monday because I’m trying to write without editing as I go and as a result of that couldn’t read what I wrote over the weekend without cringing. I changed a couple of things and rewrote maybe 500 words and then had to put it away.

I did end up starting one of the essays for my new, uh, book of essays - Be Awesome, Beautiful Dreamer. It’s not up on the BABD blog yet as it’s still in draft form, but that was a nice relaxing bit of writing that no one is WAITING for, so no pressure.

Tuesday I just finished the scene that was killing me in Unfavorable and moved on to the next one that was much easier to write. I got 1K in on that.

As for today – Imma bout to get to it. :)

My Pretties:

 

That’s that! Talk at you all on Sunday.

 

Posted in: Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Where is my mind? and #ROW80

December 4, 2011 4:26 pm ⋅ 6 Comments ⋅

I capped off a busy week with a super fun breakfast/reunion this morning.  I got together with two friends who went on an exchange program to England with me in 1990 and the guy whose family hosted two of us.  I had a wonderful time catching up with everyone – we talked about work and following your passion and kids and we reminisced and laughed and ate good food. It was one of those “picking up where you left off” experiences, really. And, I scored a roll of Rowntrees Fruit Gums. :)

Then I took the kids to a fun Star Wars birthday party (did you know that there are blow-up lightsabers?) and now we’re all worn out and I finally have time to do my ROW80 update.

I was a blogging fool this week. I participated in the YA Scavenger Hunt – which was a blast!  Many thanks to Colleen Houck for including me. I also wrote a lengthy post that will go up on the 10th for the 12 Days of Christmas Reading.  So, if YA books aren’t you thing and you didn’t get in on the scavenger hunt, you’ll want to make the rounds on 12 Days – lots of giveaways of all types of books.

Writing-wise, this week was a bit of a bust, but I don’t feel too badly about it because I was doing so many other author-centric things.  600 words on Back in Time and 87 on a pen name story on Friday.  I want to finish both stories this week.  We’ll see what happens -  when I think my week is going to be chill it suddenly becomes busy.

Here’s to us all getting off one stop before Crazytown Central.

Posted in: Blogs, E-books, good neighbors, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy Thanksgiving and #ROW80

November 23, 2011 8:31 am ⋅ 10 Comments ⋅

This year my family decided to do something different for Thanksgiving and get out of town. I’m headed to Mt. Hood in a couple of hours to enjoy a few days of eating and sledding and snowball fights.

Here’s where we’re staying:

Yes, that’s the Timberline Lodge – the hotel from The Shining. I fully expect my sister to wake me at least once by wiggling her finger in my face and saying “redrumredrumredrum.”

Our plan for Thanksgiving is to eat ourselves silly and then take the kids out to play in the snow.  We don’t get much  in the valley, and when we do it’s usually covered in a sheet of ice, so my kids have never been sledding before!

Wish me luck, I’m going to be the one driving and I haven’t ever put chains on my tires.  Actually, I haven’t driven in much snow at all since I was a teenager…why did I volunteer for this job again? :)

Enjoy the holiday, American types, and do yourself a favor and sleep in on Friday.  The 500 pack of socks for 10 cents will still be there later in the day.

Row80 update: I barfed up a whopping 3,279 words on a new pen name short story on Monday. I’m using barf in the best sense of the word – I’d been thinking about the story for a while now and wasn’t in the mood to work on my DBC story, so I thought I’d just get the beginning written.  It took off from there!  I probably would’ve stayed up late and written more, but my husband wanted me to watch How I Met Your Mother with him and my eyes were burning something fierce. I added another 400 words yesterday and have left off in an awesome spot so that I’ll be rarin’ to go on it  when I get back from the mountain.

I also completely reorganized all of my files and finally got the epub version of most of my stories up on All Romance.  A fairly productive beginning to the week that I will now completely ruin by being a sloth for three days.  Yippee!!

Have a good one, y’all.

Posted in: Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Kindle, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oh, yes, it’s ladies weekend and #ROW80

November 2, 2011 2:44 pm ⋅ 13 Comments ⋅

I’m allowed to start looking forward to the weekend when it’s only Wednesday, right?  This week has sucked so far, as I’ve got a cold and my washer and dryer crapped out just when I really needed them.  Off to Best Buy we went and procured ourselves a new set.

They were delivered yesterday, but the outlet in my laundry room was designed for a range instead of a dryer. My poor house.  I love it.  It’s orange, has a tree growing in the center of it and has lots and lots of windows, but it was built in 1964 and has apparently had nothing but DIYers (including me) habitate under its skylights. Something always has to be updated or redone because it was slapped together with hillbilly carpentry.

Many thanks to Ben, an electrician, for coming out and putting a new outlet in on such short notice.  Also, thank you for being hot and having an accent. I can’t really remember anything you said to me, but the washer and dryer are all hooked up and I’ve got on clean underwear for the first time this week.

Yeah, so when that’s a highlight you can bet I’m ready for a weekend away with my girlfriends.

We go to my friend’s family cabin at the beach every November – In fact, I think this will be my 9th year. The only time I’ve missed it was when I was, like, two days away from giving birth to my son.  We all lounge about and read US and People magazine, drink Bud Light, eat junk food and just generally have a grown-up slumber party.  On Saturday we hit the outlet mall and get started on our Christmas shopping. We play card games and make up dance routines and try on each others’ clothes. There is some hair braiding, I won’t lie. We, without fail, burn our dinner on the first night and have something fried with ranch dressing on it at the bar the second night.

The best part is we get to be how we used to be for a weekend. Before husbands and kids and jobs and mortgages and all the have-to’s that come with getting older. I get called by my first name and no one asks me to get them anything besides maybe another beer. I can forget that I’m on my second set of washer and dryers in my adult life.

The next best part is on Sunday when we go home and get to see our husbands and kids and we offer to get them anything they want and it’s good to be called Honey and Mommy again.

No matter how successful I want to be as a mother and writer, how driven I am, how much I sacrifice “who I used to be,” it can’t all be about getting ahead.  Sometimes you have to relax, do some 8-counts, play Apples to Apples and not worry about word count or deadlines or if your kids have clean jammies.

My point: Acting like a jackass 18-year-old can be good for you. :)

ROW80: I wrote 376 words on Dissent on Tuesday and head plotted the rest of the scene last night while folding, you guessed it, laundry.

Posted in: E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Kindle, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Doughnut overload and #ROW80

October 9, 2011 8:48 pm ⋅ 7 Comments ⋅

It’s only been since Wednesday that I last blogged, but it feels like it’s been weeks!  Since Wednesday, I’ve made a Rain Boots Required stop at West Linn Public library and spent two long days at the Wordstock festival in Portland.

Dudes and dudettes, so much has happened!

The tour stop in West Linn was fabulous.  We had another great turn out and this time our audience was filled with actual young adults.  They asked great questions – about writing and publishing and technique.  Watch out, y’all, the next crop of writers are gonna be some savvy upstarts!!

Thanks so much to Elaine, the Teen librarian at WLPL. She made us feel so welcome and she is such a dedicated and awesome librarian.  The kids of West Linn are lucky to have her and her bosses on their side.  The teen section of their library is a place that I know I would’ve loved to spend time in as a YA because I’m now having fantasies about escaping to there as an adult.

My apologies to Lisa Nowak and Laura Elliott for my less than stellar AV skillz.  I think we can all agree I shouldn’t be in charge of taping the talks anymore!! :)

Saturday and Sunday were spent at Wordstock from 10-6.  We had VooDoo Doughnuts at our table and let me tell y’all, doughnuts are the great equalizer.  We talked (and talked and talked and talked) to so many people who might not have stopped by our booth if it wasn’t for those crazy doughnuts.

I shared a booth with authors Angela Carlie and Laura Elliott. Lisa Nowak was at another booth, but she popped over frequently to hang out.  We had such a blast!

Since I had to register the booth name before we had even named our author tour and I wasn’t sure who exactly was going to share it with me, I named it Pacific Northwest YA Authors.  Good name, right?

Plenty of folks thought so.  In fact, a lot of people thought we were an organization and wanted to join.  At first, we laughed about it and told them we just needed a name for our booth, then, well it occurred to us that maybe we were an organization of sorts.  More of a group, but we had authors wanting to join and librarians and teachers wanting us to come give talks at their schools.

Never one to turn down an opportunity…

I give you Pacific Northwest YA Authors.

The website and e-mail address were created on Saturday night when I couldn’t sleep but for thinkin’.  Today, we signed up four schools/libraries to give talks at and collected over 20 e-mail addresses from people who want to receive our newsletter.

There’s just a welcome post up there right now, but by the end of this week I should have all of our Abouts, videos, reference links, contact info., guidelines for joining, etc. up.

Another awesome thing that happened at Wordstock besides networking our asses off, was that Lisa Nowak noticed the Trends in Publishing panel was the most well attended one of the whole event.  And you know what?  The panelists talked about self-publishing, but didn’t have a ton of experience with it.  So, Lisa and I tracked down the incoming director of Wordstock and pitched her a self-publishing panel for next year.  She seemed into it and said we were the first people to pitch her a panel for the following year.  Who knows what will come of it, but I can’t stress enough that it never hurts to ask for what you want!

ROW80 update:  If you’ve stuck around, I have good thangs to share about this too! (Seriously, I had three doughnuts today and am soooo high on the sugar!!)  I talked about my decent word count for Tuesday on Wednesday.  Yay!  On Thursday, I fired up my new Final Draft software.

Guys, I’m in love.  Yes, I actually heart software.

Although my ultimate dream would’ve been to pick a TV format and then copy and paste what I’d already written directly into it, what I got was pretty close.  I selected the script format that they use on Grey’s Anatomy and copy and pasted line by line what I’d written so far.  Voila!  Formatted script.  So easy to use.  I spent the last hour of my writing time creating new stuff for the script.  It’s such a fun project because I get to rewrite my book without having to actually rewrite my book.  Writing new dialogue for the Rosedell gang made me absolutely ecstatic.  There’s a new conversation between Avery and his best friend Jason that had me laughing my butt off.  It’s fun to be back in Zellie’s world in a new way.

Okay, I’m off to work on the PacNWYA website before my sugar crash commences.  Peace out.

Posted in: Blogs, Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, good neighbors, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,